Bottle o Smoke

But Hooray for the World Bank! Seriously, after years of be bitching about
how something had to be done regarding the Philippines Education Department, I
open the news paper this morning to read: “World Bank Okays $200 –M Loan to
improve RP Education”.

According to the article, the WB approved a $200 Million
loan to improve basic education in the Philippines, specifically “to train
school staff in financial accountability, improve teaching standards, and raise
the quality of key curricula, including English, Filipino, math, and Science”. It’s safe to say that the Philippines, which is ranked among
the lowest 10 percent of countries in terms of the quality of math and science,
needs this money.

I have been a strong believer that to change the country,
you need to improve education, and this is a perfect stepping stone. However, a word of caution, this $200 million
needs to be invested into the education department in the right way. While I believe that the money should be used
for training and improving math and science, I also believe in improving the simpler
things that people tend to forget.

A perfect example is school uniforms. My aunt who works with an organization called
“Feed the Hungry”, spends a whole year in the states raising money so she can
come to the Philippinesand help certain provinces improve their public school. She buys them books, computers, ect…but she
also told me that the most important thing she realized was the need for
clothes.

“You can have a public school that can have the newest
computers, or the latest text books, but the problem I faced is that many
children will not come to school because they have nothing to wear, and thus
are made fun off. Some kids come to
school with no shoes, or torn shirts, and are ridiculed because of it, and at
the same time they cannot afford to pay for uniforms”.

While this may seem like a very small insignificant problem
to many, I believe that the government should seriously think about providing
uniforms in public schools. “Many
children want to learn, they are just ashamed of the way they look”. That shouldn’t be the case, but in a country
materialistic as ours, in hardly surprising. However, sometimes it doesn’t take some big groundbreaking solution to a
problem, sometimes it can be something so small and so simple. If you don’t believe me read The Tipping Point, by Malcom Gladwell
(amazing read…).

A perfect example he uses in the book is how NY was able to
make the subways safer. It wasn’t by
enforcing the law with more police, or by increasing rates so poor people wouldn’t
be able to ride them (and that would be just mean…), it was simple: they erased all graffiti. When a train car would come in the nights
shift and have graffiti, they would paint over it and use it the next day. When those that vandalized the trains would
come in the next night to see their work, they would be surprised to see
nothing but clean trains passing through picking up passengers.  This
would deter those who tagged the subways; the very same people who made the
subways a dangerous place to be. Once
the graffiti stopped, slowly, crime in the subways stopped. No big grand spending plan, just lots of
paint remover.

I’d like to think we could use that $200 Million in a
similar way. Growing up I hated
uniforms, but now I realized the importance of it. It makes us all equal. There is no one around to judge us if were
wearing torn clothes, or a flashy popped up Lacoste shirt (side note, what’s
with the popping of collars? Am I the
only one who finds that really really lame on guys?) With Uniforms there is a level playing flied,
no one has an advantage and can ridicule you.

Uniforms is one thing I have in mind, the other is
transportation of children to actual schools. Yes I would also want improved training, school supplies, and quality of
education to increase, and I believe the money should be used here as well
obviously, but we must realize that this money is a loan.  Meaning, if we do not see returns in the
next few years, this loan will come back to bite us in the ass. We need
to use this money in such a way that more children who want to come to class
can and will not be deterred from it.  We need more children to graduate high school
and college. We need to see these children work and get good jobs, so that we
might be able to pay this loan back someday.

The fact that we might not be able to pay the money back is
my main worry. The IMF screwed us before, and as much as I’m a skeptic of the WB, I’d like to think there better
than the IMF. The bottom line is simple;
the $200 million needs to be used in such a way that we get actual returns not
just in the short run, but in the long run as well. I’m not looking for something to happen over
night, but in 5-6 years, yeah I think I’d give them that much time, and as an
optimist, I’m willing to give the WB and the

Philippines

the benefit of the
doubt here.

But I swear to god, if I hear that millions of this money
went to some fucking politician or senator’s wallet…well I’ll give them a free lesion
of my fist in their face.